Monday, April 29, 2013

Cheating Death

*I wrote this on Friday after I left the Dental Surgeon's office*

Guess what, guys? I fucking cheated death today. I fucking murdered death. I had surgery and I came out the other side. Do you know how alive I feel right now? There's nothing quite like cheating death on a beautiful spring day to really put a skip in your step. I'm alive and I want to fucking LIVE. WOW. Feelin' pretty damn good.

Sure, maybe it was just oral surgery. Yes, it was very minor oral surgery. So minor that they didn't have to put in any stitches, but still. There were risks. They did use anesthetic. Any time they use anesthetic there is always a chance of some pretty scary shit going down. They made me acutely aware of those risks with forms and stern-faced warnings. Okay, it was just a local anesthetic. There could have been complications. Who knows how my body might react? My body chemistry has probably changed significantly since the last time I was administered a local anesthetic to the inside of my mouth. Plus, eating with a numbed tongue (assuming I made it through the surgery itself) can be pretty fucking dangerous. I could have bitten the shit out of my tongue and not even known it. We all know how tempting it is to chew on your tongue when it's anesthetized. It feels so big and chewy.

The doctor still hacked away at the inside of my mouth with sharp blades. He removed tissue. He fucking chopped it right the fuck out of my mouth. There was blood. I didn't see any blood, but I know how it works. You cut away someone's delicate mouth tissues and they bleed like a Scotsman (I'm assuming that Scotsmen are known to bleed profusely. Please correct me if this made up idea is in any way misleading or disparaging to the people of Scotland). I did hear the doctor ask for gauze. You don't ask for gauze unless you're looking to sop up pools of blood. Everyone knows that gauze is, by far, the best tool for sopping up blood. My point is that I could have bled out. THROUGH MY MOUTH. Imagine that particular hell. Would I have died from blood loss or from drowning in the very substance that has been sustaining me these 37 years? IRONIC, says Alanis Morissette. That didn't happen, of course. He stopped the bleeding pretty easily with a relatively small piece of gauze and the wound left in my mouth is the size of a small peanut, but let's not quibble over the minutia. I SURVIVED WITH MINOR INJURIES. I STARED DEATH IN THE FACE AND TOLD HIM (OR MAYBE HER) TO FUCK OFF.

I live to see another day and it feels fucking good. Also, it's true what they say, everything does taste better.